N
NM
Junior member
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2018
- Messages
- 1
Hey guys,
I'm new to this forum and I searched it up on Google to find it. I wanted to share my story so it might help some people. This is probably going to be a long one, but trust me, it's worth reading.
I'm 31 and visited a dentist after 8 years yesterday. Well, you guessed it, lots of bad news for me. But let me first do a flash back and tell you why I skipped appointments for almost a decade.
I had a tooth that needed treatment back then so I visited a dentist. He told me you can't just fill it, it needs a root canal so he did it. That night, after the root canal, I had the worst pain in my whole life. I was literally chewing on my pillow. That was bad, very, very bad! The worst part: Later I figured from another dentist (based on the x-ray) that I could fix that tooth with a simple filling instead of a root canal.
While on that, the x-ray also showed that I have two wisdom teeth to be extracted. I have a small jaw and large teeth. I happened to have two wisdom teeth that were placed horizontally and grown on the nerve. One of them, had gotten infected and I had severe pain. Looked for a surgeon to extract it, but doctors just kept passing on it. They said it's too risky and they can't do it cause it may hurt my jaw nerve permanently. I desperately found a surgeon who said he will do it. The surgery took 2.5 hours with lots of unpleasant moments as you can imagine. He told me to go and have a rest for a month and come back for the other one to be extracted. In my mind, I said "Sure, I'm never coming back here, even if I die". A year passed, the other one got infected and I had pain. Went to the same surgeon, he extracted the other one. Same unpleasant procedure, maybe even worse than the first one.
After two extracted teeth and one painful root canal, I decided I'm not visiting a dentist ever again. I can skip chewing (which I did sometimes) or even eating but I'm not going back there. The pain and discomfort and long hours of unpleasant situation were not worth it to me.
Fast forward 8 years, I visited yesterday. First, the one without nerve, is all broken, only two small pieces left because I did not visit a dentist to put a crown on it. Upon evaluation, the dentist said it needs to be extracted. It's all dead and a bad teeth now. There's also another one to be extracted which is live but went bad. I had another partially broken teeth, dentist said we don't touch it for now. In the future, it will need root canal and filling. I have several fillings to be done. She also said, there is another broken tooth (3rd one) that can probably be cured but when evaluated further, it turned out that two of my adjacent teeth (3 and 4) needed root canal.
Imagine my sadness, fear and anxiety. All that pain from root canal operation reappeared. This time even worse, two teeth need it. On that moment, I had a choice. Skip it and wait until things are worse or go for it.
Well, here it was my decision: As I'm writing this for you now, I have one filling done, two root canals that is not even filled yet (should be done on Monday). I'm feeling great because, first of all, I experienced absolutely no pain, not during the operation not even after it.
This is literally less than 24 hours after root canal of two difficult teeth and I'm sitting here typing you this long story. I'm going to fix everything now and not let anything stay even if I have to visit my dentist everyday for a month.
I'm never going to skip brushing ever again. I'm never going to skip appointments ever again.
Here are the lessons I learned:
Lesson #1: A lot of dental decisions are not absolute. It depends on the experience and professionalism of the dentist to come up with the right course of actions. Make sure you find the right doctor, who listens to you, calms you down and is willing to evaluate the situation carefully. A good dentist will make sure you never experience any pain or discomfort.
Lesson #2: You WILL eventually visit the dentist, it can be years or decades, but eventually your body will force you to. Once things go bad with your teeth, even a small thing, it's a ticking bomb. Hence, the later you do, the worse it will be in terms of discomfort, cost and duration and the limited your choices will be. If I had went for checkups at least once every 6 months or a year, I would never have to go through all of this.
Lesson #3: I always brush quickly once a day but other than that, I don't do anything for my teeth. You need to brush at least twice daily. Prevention is MUCH better than cure. Brushing correctly, and taking care of your teeth is a wise investment. That 5-10 minutes of your day will save you many things in the future
I'm new to this forum and I searched it up on Google to find it. I wanted to share my story so it might help some people. This is probably going to be a long one, but trust me, it's worth reading.
I'm 31 and visited a dentist after 8 years yesterday. Well, you guessed it, lots of bad news for me. But let me first do a flash back and tell you why I skipped appointments for almost a decade.
I had a tooth that needed treatment back then so I visited a dentist. He told me you can't just fill it, it needs a root canal so he did it. That night, after the root canal, I had the worst pain in my whole life. I was literally chewing on my pillow. That was bad, very, very bad! The worst part: Later I figured from another dentist (based on the x-ray) that I could fix that tooth with a simple filling instead of a root canal.
While on that, the x-ray also showed that I have two wisdom teeth to be extracted. I have a small jaw and large teeth. I happened to have two wisdom teeth that were placed horizontally and grown on the nerve. One of them, had gotten infected and I had severe pain. Looked for a surgeon to extract it, but doctors just kept passing on it. They said it's too risky and they can't do it cause it may hurt my jaw nerve permanently. I desperately found a surgeon who said he will do it. The surgery took 2.5 hours with lots of unpleasant moments as you can imagine. He told me to go and have a rest for a month and come back for the other one to be extracted. In my mind, I said "Sure, I'm never coming back here, even if I die". A year passed, the other one got infected and I had pain. Went to the same surgeon, he extracted the other one. Same unpleasant procedure, maybe even worse than the first one.
After two extracted teeth and one painful root canal, I decided I'm not visiting a dentist ever again. I can skip chewing (which I did sometimes) or even eating but I'm not going back there. The pain and discomfort and long hours of unpleasant situation were not worth it to me.
Fast forward 8 years, I visited yesterday. First, the one without nerve, is all broken, only two small pieces left because I did not visit a dentist to put a crown on it. Upon evaluation, the dentist said it needs to be extracted. It's all dead and a bad teeth now. There's also another one to be extracted which is live but went bad. I had another partially broken teeth, dentist said we don't touch it for now. In the future, it will need root canal and filling. I have several fillings to be done. She also said, there is another broken tooth (3rd one) that can probably be cured but when evaluated further, it turned out that two of my adjacent teeth (3 and 4) needed root canal.
Imagine my sadness, fear and anxiety. All that pain from root canal operation reappeared. This time even worse, two teeth need it. On that moment, I had a choice. Skip it and wait until things are worse or go for it.
Well, here it was my decision: As I'm writing this for you now, I have one filling done, two root canals that is not even filled yet (should be done on Monday). I'm feeling great because, first of all, I experienced absolutely no pain, not during the operation not even after it.
This is literally less than 24 hours after root canal of two difficult teeth and I'm sitting here typing you this long story. I'm going to fix everything now and not let anything stay even if I have to visit my dentist everyday for a month.
I'm never going to skip brushing ever again. I'm never going to skip appointments ever again.
Here are the lessons I learned:
Lesson #1: A lot of dental decisions are not absolute. It depends on the experience and professionalism of the dentist to come up with the right course of actions. Make sure you find the right doctor, who listens to you, calms you down and is willing to evaluate the situation carefully. A good dentist will make sure you never experience any pain or discomfort.
Lesson #2: You WILL eventually visit the dentist, it can be years or decades, but eventually your body will force you to. Once things go bad with your teeth, even a small thing, it's a ticking bomb. Hence, the later you do, the worse it will be in terms of discomfort, cost and duration and the limited your choices will be. If I had went for checkups at least once every 6 months or a year, I would never have to go through all of this.
Lesson #3: I always brush quickly once a day but other than that, I don't do anything for my teeth. You need to brush at least twice daily. Prevention is MUCH better than cure. Brushing correctly, and taking care of your teeth is a wise investment. That 5-10 minutes of your day will save you many things in the future
